Crater

I need to say something soon before

my voice becomes a muffle and then

like stones in the stream bed.  The tips

of the hydrangea flowerets are blue

paint curls in the heart, color gently

flakes at the center.  Then comes the white

hot feeling of rolling an ankle over a stone.

Pollen dusts over the face of a stream.

The last stars from a crater of stars pass overhead.

I think, tonight, but the limitless

blue message of thought keeps passing me

like a downed plane flapping its baleful

advertisement.  Its impact like a good

person who cannot live up to an expectancy.

The letter carrier carries the apology.

I want to report the disappearance

to the milkman, but he is gone.

He has no business here.

Lacunal Contents

Today is not the day, and tomorrow
the landscape will not be ready
And the next day and the day after that, rare fruit.
Eventually, you stop wearing your vest.
The lighthouse lights on only odd
days of the week.

Something drops, like a pebble
behind every good gesture
and at the end of the evening
all good gestures drop
without the proper postage
like the morning paper
unto a yard
of a family who has been on vacation
for months and will never return.

And at the end of the evening
others drop like clothes

distracted by warmer places, and stopping
to rub the fur of dandelions from their eyes
drop the questions of their wives into a bird's throat.

A cloud drops gently over the landscape of the day.

This is just one occurrence in the processions of mysteries. 

Mistakes and Echoes of Mistakes

The rain cannot
separate now from the river.
Just as your dog
cannot separate itself
from night.
Her tumors have
finally stopped growing
and the thick necklace
is complete.
And no matter
how simple you
cannot comprehend
the ocean at night
with a sea of luminescent
jellyfish in it.
But maybe, I suppose
in the dark
one might
recognize the swallowing
the fading absence
or the moving fins that have not
even evolved enough to protect you.
You see where this is going.
There are other reasons why
we bury things that culture
and anthropologists have failed
to figure out.  It has more
to do with ourselves
digging things up than we think.
But now it is time to dig
ourselves through
the damp darkness once again
to listen to an inadvertent song
and drink in the cold air.
Already we
are beginning to feel safe.
We are beginning
to feel the language returning
to the pages of the book
whose words had only
left for a moment
had blurred where
we stopped seeing them.

Unintentionally

the light enter the dancing girls
mnemonic footwork like a hurricane
sent to rescue you from the trailer home.
Now the winds sweep your wild nights.
It is like this even after waking up from a long dream
of fishes or goldenrods.  The grainy music
distorted by the legs of tress and swing sets.
The hallways are littered in pretzels
the outline of a young boy's face.
No matter how many times we've put him to bed
he sees something and pokes his head up.
There is enough smoke and dust but
never a good jazz band.
Not even the ones that keep popping up in poetry
can compete.  Something begins to form
but it is not a ghost crying out its displeasure,
angry about its state.  But on some nights
when the sick do cry, sometimes watch, you'll see,
dancing to a god that left her no home
no bridge to kick a stone from.

Fact Realized

You try to get everyone
over.  You try to crush
insects just so it isn't
messy.  You try not to feel
like you've just taken a swig
of ocean juice.  Like a martini
glass has held wine, or the fuzz
hanging off your chin is
an old way of thinking.
You notice even the bumpy
maintenance crew.  The smoke
hanging in the bushes
has just breathed a star into orbit.
Sand swirls in your mouth.
And then you learn
that your friend has died.
I had wanted to invite you.

Sample History of “Sense of Wonder”

One can only lie back in bed and think that he

should bud somewhere in the wine cellar.

Or think flowers have a happier time of it being

potted…you know the image.  One must write the story

in the laundry or on the back of a defeated mermaid

slipping below the surface no matter if the lamp

distorts the glare through the lugubrious windows.

No matter if on Tuesday love attracts

an obsolescent fruit or kisses dry wetting

another world but not this one.  A cluster

of tree boughs wag in a simplifying motion.

Bats siesta amid the clatter.  That’s what I

love about them and my aunt too!  But who

doesn’t glimmer though the ash was what I was

leading to.  Who doesn’t use his lamppost as a searchlight

or a bread truck delivering the tapered roll

along with the wheat , the white and the rye?

Security at Auction

The mirror I left on the floor filled with apricots

was careless. But careless is something I’ve been

recently.  I didn’t want to open the book

the author had signed, crossed out his name

and signed again like a bitten into peach.

Now say something philosophical.

And when we threw him out he clanged

like an old chandelier.  A great smoker

reduced to ashes.  Outside two swans

clear their long throats.  It is remarkably

short and over like the first time making love.

Now I m writing this letter from a field of aster

And the stems are understandably long. 

Thought on the Stairs

Tomorrow a visage of ourselves embarks

in unreliable paper hats.  But tonight

they hang dampened by a long thought.

Still, their luminance can be seen for hundreds

of miles.  It is so beautiful a ghost puts down

its misty feet and walks. Places water

like a garment to its lips to quench the ash,

 and pauses like a phantom before a corner.

The breeze fills with monsters!

Everything is dangerous in the lion

skinned twilight.  Plums make for smoother

landscapes.  O sifter of words!

Seer of rumored worlds!

I pick up a heron by its neck

and carry it like a pitcher

through the millions of flagella

that feel for me.

Myths and Old Matters

Sometimes, meanwhile, actually
I arrived, into the street, on a canvas
so help me, the book, your novel
in early fall, has been called
our innuendo, the college
wishes to remain nameless
the oval of good nature
flags waving and cleaning up
timekeeping for the dying
the time, the station, the train
by some, offered, imagined bride
free and ready to wear these shoes
and brings the kiss with you
the myth of old matters
crossings and love
of uncertain lonely quarrels
of ourselves and these parts
and consequences
that I have to offer

Same Title

Nothing is ever accomplished by
the nullification of the other.
Yes, and Elexis doesn't understand!
Doesn't even own a bow
until after we saw the old movie
with the Indians and then
went right out for a pair of moccasins.
How we've been misled!
That was the same conversation I had with Elsie
as we planned our non-sequitorial ambitions
just as the world ended
peaceably.

For All I Know

For those who eat their lunch there's chocolate cake.
And for those who watch the moon casually
turns like a violet wheel under the train bridge.
For those the olive love after the flood summons
in the darkened color of its enlightening
a grateful basket shimmering of thoughtfulness.
For those who sleep clouds like drowned
pillows float about a fishy river.  Inexact definitions,
excerpts of dreams, shadows of sunny nudes shinning
like a penguin coat caped with curtains knitted by a swallow,
forget the tenuous tap of water.
A dog laps and ...has it been years?
That poetry (after all) flashed it panties,
and young, we gave it a slanted look.
Not a shard of misery came down our street
though the birches were as fierce as the hiss
of caterpillars claiming that their tomato world
had led them here.  They could have been singing
for all I know as I set them aflame.
Their underbellies darkening like the clouds before the rain.

The Museum Piece

Gary was a night watchman
at the museum.  He didn't
go around at night and wear
the jewels of the pharaohs
or add an extra brush stroke
to the Picasso. He didn't
even run around the place
carrying the Grecian urn
like a football. No,
Gary went on the internet
and watched funerals.
He clicked through the faces
of all the stars we lost.
When Gary wasn't
being a night watchman
he would be watching
funerals somewhere.
And looking in the eyes
of movie stars.
I wish I could tell you
why this is the case
but now sitting
watching Gary's funeral
I wonder if
Gary knew how much
the rest of the world
was really very much like him.
How we love our movie stars
and like looking at the dead
instead of punting an urn
daring an emperor
or adding to art.